


Fly Me to The Moon

by Horolojium



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bones and Nyota are bros, Bones can sing, Fluff, M/M, Music, Shenanigans, Snark, The Rituals Are Intricate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 17:02:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20727710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horolojium/pseuds/Horolojium
Summary: In which there is music, shenanigans, and everyone trying very, very hard not to talk about their feelings.





	Fly Me to The Moon

“Bones, I swear if I spend one more minute staring out the viewscreen at absolutely fucking nothing, my eyes are going to fall out of my head,” whines Jim.

Leonard inspects a piece of replicated asparagus, decides it passes muster, and eats it before turning an unimpressed look on Jim.

“Starfleet ain’t all explosions and near death experiences and beautiful alien queens, you knew that when you signed up.”

“I know, but this is the longest we’ve _ever_ gone without even a milk run mission. And you can’t deny that for the Enterprise, explosions and near death experiences and beautiful alien queens is kind of all in a day’s work,” argues Jim, his head flopped on the mess table.

Giving up on trying to choke down the replicator’s approximation of a stir fry, Leonard sighs.

“You’re right, I can’t. But you know what?” He crosses his arms. “I haven’t had a single injury more serious than a burn and a stubbed toe since we’ve been in this quadrant, and that’s the way I like it.”

Would he ever admit to Jim that he wouldn’t mind a sprained ankle or case of Vopyiri blood worms right about now?

Never in a million years.

Jim huffs and stomps off with his tray, muttering under his breath about, “Stupid mother henning doctors with no sense of adventure-”

By the end of next week, the excruciating boredom permeating the ship finally makes it to Medbay.

Inventory’s been done not once but three times, the nurses and junior doctors and medical ensigns have all been put through enough critical care drills and training seminars to constitute a whole new medical degree, and Leonard is this close to allowing Chapel to challenge M’Benga to a ping pong tournament using the bio beds.

He’s in his office, nodding off over a second rate medical journal, when he gets a comm from Jim.

“Bones, senior officers meeting in 10.”

Leonard slides into a chair right on time, clutching a steaming cup of coffee. In the two months that the Enterprise had been star charting the newly discovered Omicron Delta quadrant, the weekly senior officers meeting had become a ten minute formality, simply because Stellar Cartography was the only department seeing any action.

Out of habit, Leonard visually evaluates Jim’s current condition in between sips of coffee. It’s something he picked up in the Academy to quell his anxiety over Jim’s ability to get hurt or sick or have an allergic reaction to something at the drop of a hat.

But it’s also much more simple than that. Leonard knows Jim better than anybody on this ship, not just as his doctor, but as his friend.

To the untrained eye, Jim looks just peachy. Or as peachy as a Starfleet captain can ever be. But the ragged nails, purple splotches under his eyes, and constant movement tell Leonard everything he already knows.

That Jim really shouldn’t have pissed off Admiral Walker with that stunt on Bajor with the Orion merchants, a flagrant violation of the Prime Directive that Leonard thoroughly approved of.

Starfleet, however, did not share Leonard’s opinion, and effectively grounded the Enterprise with this three month assignment that could have been done by a couple of monkeys in a tin can.

“Good, you’re all here. Spock, would you please tell everyone what you told me earlier?” says Jim, drumming what’s left of his nails on the table.

Spock raises an eyebrow, and Jim sighs. “What you told me approximately forty five minutes ago, on the bridge, Commander?”

The Vulcan nods and rises from his chair, pulling up a chart on the holoscreen in the ready room as he makes his way to the front of the room.

“ As you can see by the data currently displayed, personnel efficiency is down by 10.321% in every department except Stellar Cartography,” says Spock, the tinge of displeasure in his voice giving away that he’s pissed with a capital P.

Leonard glances at the chart, and sees Spock’s neatly plotted negative correlation between time spent in quadrant four, sector Omicron Delta and crew morale. He’s proud, and a little surprised, to see that Medical has the least severe drop in morale out of every department 

“Thank you Spock, you can take a seat,” says Jim, jumping out of his own and pacing the room.

He stops and whirls around.

“The thing is, we’ve done everything we can to boost crew morale and give everyone something to do. The Enterprise has never been cleaner, more organized, or energy efficient. Uhura, how many book clubs do we have going now?”

“Seven, sir,” replies Uhura.

Jim slams his hands on his thighs and says with emphasis, “Seven, exactly! And three sparring tournaments and five art classes and two cooking classes and a hundred million independent research projects-”

He interrupts himself to shoot a glare at Spock. “And I’m perfectly aware that there are not, actually, a hundred million independent research projects currently aboard the Enterprise.”

And Leonard’s sure that in the past two months, in between inventing new drills and training protocols for the entire crew, taking Uhura’s Antarian dialect lecture series, publishing a paper refuting Singh’s Neural Multiverse Theory, and getting his ass kicked in chess by Spock on a regular basis, Jim’s checked in on every single one of those independent research projects both because he’s genuinely curious, and to get to know the crew a little better.

Leonard looks over to see a pointy eyebrow creep down from “judgemental” to Spock’s usual “bitchy”.

“The Enterprise is a ship full of bored geniuses, and sooner rather than later, people are going to start pulling stupid stunts just because they can. And we can’t leave Omicron Delta for another two weeks. So, any ideas?” asks Jim, looking around the room expectantly.

Scotty says hopefully, “Sir, I happen to know this lovely little dri-”

Jim sighs and says, “Scotty, as much as it pains me to say this, I just can’t authorize a ship wide drinking contest.”

The chief engineer scowls. He turns to Sulu, and Leonard can already envision the cases of alchohol poisoning he’s going to have to treat from their _unauthorized_ drinking contest.

“Captain, I would be amenable to organizing a poker tournament,” says Spock, surprising Leonard. He didn’t know the hobgoblin played any Terran card games, let alone poker.

Jim grins. “You’re on, Spock. Although I have a feeling you’ve got the best poker face on the ship.”

Spock inclines his head and says with all the poise of a diplomat’s son, “We shall see, sir.”

Uhura offers, “What about a talent show?”

The captain’s face lights up and he throws his hands in the air. “Uhura, what would we do without you?” says Jim jubilantly.

“I’m not sure I want to know, sir,” Uhura deadpans.

After Uhura’s given the task of organizing the talent show, Leonard fully intends on capitalizing on Jim’s good mood and cajole him into getting his overdue vaccine booster sprays.

As he shuffles through his mental rolodex of ways to get Jim into Medbay outside of a crisis, Leonard realizes that he and Jim are currently right next to said Medbay, and Jim hasn’t run screaming for the hills yet.

Leonard narrows his eyes.

He can count on one hand the number of times Jim has willingly sought out medical attention, and all of those instances came about because Jim was a hangnail away from death’s door and decided to wait until then to tell Leonard about it.

They keep walking, and Leonard nearly has a heart attack when Jim sits neatly on the nearest biobed, looks up at him, and says, “I’m here for my vaccine boosters, Bones. I’m behind schedule, you should really keep up with that sort of thing.”

He stomps over to Jim, and pulls out a tricorder, waving it around like an old Earth boxer before a fight.

“Who, or what are you, and what have you done with Jim Kirk?” says Leonard in his best, “I’m a doctor but don’t fuck with me” voice. He’s mostly joking, but with how many times Jim’s been possessed or body snatched or mind controlled, he’s also not joking at all.

Leonard shines a light in Jim’s eyes, peers into his ears, and nearly sticks a neural monitor on his forehead when Jim bats his hands away.

He pokes Jim in the chest and asks, “Tell me something only Jim Kirk would know.”

Jim puts a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Bones, here I am trying to take care of my health, and this is how you treat me?”

He pokes Jim again, this time far less gently.

“Okay, okay, fine.” The captain’s eyes gleam. “Your family found out that you hate fishing when your Uncle Dave took you on a weekend bass fishing trip to Canada. You were nine years old, and when you caught a record breaking fish in the first hour, you apologized, threw it back in, and cried until Uncle Dave brought you back to Georgia.”

Leonard rolls his eyes, and preps the hypospray cartridges. “Damn right I did, the whole thing was barbaric.”

Sticking the hypospray in his scrubs pocket, Leonard crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow at Jim.

“Out with it, kid. God knows the only way you come down here is if you’re nearly dead, or if you want something. And I don’t see any reason to suspect that you’re about to keel over, so what is it?”

Jim gets a cunning, mischievous look that Leonard knows from experience only means trouble. “Do you remember that Andorian prince we helped out a few months ago?”

As if Leonard could forget the stories Jim regaled him with about the frankly acrobatic sex he’d had with said Andorian prince. He’d wanted to both rinse out his ears and remember every sordid detail for purposes Jim never needed to know about.

“Well, as a thank you for the _generous cultural exchange,”_ Jim waggles his eyebrows before continuing, “ Prince Ysal gave me a present. An unopened bottle of Eagle Rare Single Barrel Bourbon. Vintage.”

“You’re fucking with me. An Andorian prince did not give you a bottle of the best damn bourbon the galaxy has ever seen,” accuses Leonard, not sure if he should sweet talk Jim into sharing or threaten him with more hyposprays.

Jim holds up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“Boy Scout, my ass,” mutters Leonard. “Why are you telling me about this now?”

The captain looks downright devilish as he hops off the biobed and stands very close to Leonard.

“Sign up for the talent show, Bones, and the whole bottle’s yours. If you don’t, I’ll give it to Scotty and have him drink the whole thing right in front of you.”

Jim leans in even closer. “And Scotty doesn’t even like bourbon.”

“You goddamn sonofa-” splutters Leonard.

Jim just laughs and strolls out the door, smacking Leonard on the ass as he goes. “That’s the spirit, Bones.”

The sneaky bastard didn’t even get his vaccines.

-

Leonard lasts three days before he caves. Three terrible, awful, no good, very bad days, in which thoughts of Eagle Rare bourbon dance the can-can all over his policy of not making a fool out of himself.

He reaches his breaking point when M’Benga slides him a PADD requisitioning seventeen thousand units of Klingon plasma, and Leonard signs off on it without batting an eye.

“This is a surprise, Dr. McCoy. I did not expect you to agree with my assessment that we could use seventeen thousand units of Klingon plasma, but I am glad to see that we see eye to eye on the matter,” says M’Benga, amusement undermining his usual formality.

“Seventeen thousand units of Klingon plasma! An entire planet doesn’t need seventeen thousand units of Klingon pl-” he blusters before looking down at the offending PADD. Leonard heaves a sigh, and pushes the PADD toward his colleague.

He knows a psych test when he sees one, and that this is M’Benga’s way of telling him to get a grip.

Muttering a gruff thanks and a half-assed excuse as to why he’s leaving right this second in M’Benga’s general direction, Leonard sets out to find Uhura.

As he stalks down the hallway to the turbo lift, a plan springs to life. Well, more like claws its way out of graveyard dirt and back into the land of the living.

Because Leonard, deep in his heart of hearts, can be just as much of a diabolical asshole as anyone else on this ship when the situation calls for it. And Jim dangling a carrot like that under his nose is exactly that kind of situation.

Uhura’s in her quarters, curled up in Tribble print pajamas with a PADD and a mug of something fragrant and spicy. She lets Leonard in, gracious but confused at the unexpected visit.

“Can I help you with something, Dr. McCoy?” she asks, perching on the purple loveseat squished in the corner.

“We’re off duty, please, call me Leonard,” he replies with a wave of his hands. “But, uh, I do need your help. It’s about the talent show, excuse me, ‘Enterprise’s Got Talent.”

She jumps up with a grin, and rummages around for another PADD. “Oh, Leonard, this is wonderful, I have to admit I never thought you would sign up.”

He cuts in, “Wait, wait, wait. It’s not that simple.” 

Uhura stands back up, her smile threatening to slip into something a little sharper. “Oh?”

Leonard crosses his arms and says, “Jim bet Scotty a bottle of bourbon that I wouldn’t do it.” He pauses before continuing with emphasis, “A bottle of Eagle Rare bourbon.”

“That bastard.”

“Exactly. So, will you help me out?” he asks, praying that Uhura’s desire to see Jim thrown off his game occasionally hasn’t dimmed since the Academy.

She grips his hand and replies with a gleam in her eye, “Leonard, for a drink of that bourbon and the chance to see Jim speechless? I’d do almost anything.”

They shake on it, and Leonard’s suddenly extremely grateful that Uhura’s happy as Chief Communications Officer, because damn if the woman couldn’t take over the ship if she ever put her mind to it.

Uhura fetches her still steaming tea, and takes a sip before asking, “So, other than getting you into the lineup under Jim’s nose, did you need anything else?”

Leonard looks down and takes a deep breath in through his nose as the room suddenly gets very warm. “I’m going to sing, and if you’re willing to give it, I need your help to whip my voice into shape”

God, imagining it and actually saying it out loud and committing to this harebrained idea are two very different things, and a part of Leonard really wishes he could yank back what he just said and forget the whole thing.

Uhura, bless her, just asks, “Well, have you had any prior experience outside of singing in the shower or drunk karaoke?”

But then she looks at him again, tilts her head and says, “But, you don’t do things by halves, do you?”

The smell of dogwood blossoms in suffocating humidity washes over him, and Leonard thinks of bright afternoons sitting with his mother at her piano, the one with the chipped yellow keys and a red bench stuffed with antique sheet music.

“No,” he says softly. “No, I don’t.”

-

In the two weeks leading up to the talent show, Leonard spends more time in Uhura’s company than he has in the past five years put together. Every minute he’s not on duty and Uhura isn’t rehearsing her own act, they’re in her quarters with a holographic piano and an endless supply of throat soothing hyposprays.

“You’re tensing your jaw, Leonard, that’s why you aren’t getting that resonance you really want,” says Uhura, a little impatiently.Leonard heaves a frustrated sigh, and rubs a hand across his face.

He’s managed to coax his voice back from the rusty horror it was two weeks ago, and Leonard can tell Uhura’s impressed with his progress. He can hit and hold the notes just fine, and his fingers take to the holokeys like he never stopped playing. His vibrato’s not as strong as it used to be, but hey, he can’t have everything.

But there’s something missing, something essential to the piece he’s performing that’s just out of reach. Leonard can’t figure out what it is, and it’s driving him nuts.

“I know, I know. Let’s go through it again, from the top,” says Leonard, taking a moment to grab a drink and stretch before sitting back down at the piano and staring at the digital sheet music.

Uhura cracks her knuckles. “Whenever you’re ready.”

They begin, and once again the piano and Leonard’s voice swirl together in a way that’s technically nearly perfect, but rings hollow all the same.The last notes fade away, and Leonard resists the urge to bang his head against the wall. Frustration creeps under his skin, and he flicks away the holopiano with more force than strictly necessary.

“You’ll get it, I know you will,” encourages Uhura as she pulls out her lyre. For all that she puts him through his paces in his lessons, Leonard knows she really does want to see him succeed.

He thanks her for her time, and heads out the door. Lost in thought, he’s not sure where his feet have taken him until he’s standing in the locker room of his favorite gym, the one that no one else uses, and typing in the combo to his personal locker.

Changing into a black t shirt and loose, moisture wicking pants, Leonard can’t make up his mind about what he wants to do. He hates running with a burning passion, and the weight machines won’t settle the restless energy under his skin.

He nearly decides on dusting off his swimming gear and doing laps as a last resort, when a bushy blond head gets right in his face.

“Bones! Spock bailed on our weekly sparring session to go ‘rehearse with Uhura”, Jim says with emphatic air quotes at the end. “And I haven’t gotten to test this new grappling technique Scotty taught me, so whattaya say?”

He’s really pulling out all the stops-Puppy dog eyes, batting his stupidly thick lashes, and pouting like a Risa showgirl.

And Leonard, as always, is damn near helpless in the face of all that.

“You that desperate to get your ass kicked, kid?”

Jim smirks and replies, “I could say the same to you, old man.”

Oh, now it’s fucking _on._

They make their way up a flight of stairs to the private sparring rooms, the ones with the special floor to cushion falls and soak up blood. Leonard tries really, really hard not to notice how Jim’s wearing extremely tight black workout leggings and a shirt about a size and a half too small.

He fails miserably.

Once in the room, they do a quick cardio warmup and stretch. Leonard’s pleased to see that although Jim can do more pushups than him any day of the week, he can still do a full split while Jim can barely touch his toes.

Leonard draws himself out of his split and clambors to his feet, swinging his arms a little to get them ready for what’s coming.

“So, how d’you wanna do this? The fancy Academy bullshit, or the real thing?” he drawls, eyeing Jim.

Jim takes a moment to respond, blinking rapidly before replying, “Bones, do you really have to ask?”

See, there’s a reason why no one will spar with Jim other than Spock and occasionally Leonard. And that reason is because Jim fights like he has no other choice, like he’s fighting for his life every time he steps onto the mats. He fights dirty, doesn’t pull any punches, and can spot a weak spot from a mile away.

Leonard, before he got his act together and became a doctor, got in his fair share of street fights and bar fights and the kind of fights where only one person comes out of the ring conscious. He’s not proud of it, but it has come in handy on several nasty away missions.

He and Jim both know what’s like to fix up split knuckles without a dermal regenerator, and how to keep going when your opponent wants nothing more than to see you squished into a red smear on the ground.

So, they don’t truly spar with anyone else, not out of pity or a misplaced superiority complex, but the unspoken agreement to let the crew live in ignorance of the kind of violence the man who leads them and the man who heals them are capable of.

As he dodges Jim’s leg trying to hook around the back of his knee while attempting to knock Jim off balance with his shoulder, Leonard feels the tension of the day seep out of him.

Jim wins the first round with a sneaky feint that ends with Leonard’s arm twisted behind his back and Jim’s foot pressing into the delicate tendons of his knee, and they’re taking a water break when Jim brings up the talent show.

“I’ve gotta admit Bones, you’re a bigger man than me for letting Scotty have that Eagle Rare bottle,” pokes Jim.

Leonard wipes his mouth and shrugs, keeping his poker face intact. “Guess so.”

Jim gives him a strange, searching look before hooking his thumb back at the mats. “Ready for round two?”

Rolling his shoulders, Leonard ducks into a low, exaggerated bow.

“After you.”

This time, Leonard’s got Jim on the ropes. He’s not as sneaky as Jim, but his knowledge of anatomy more than makes up for it. Soon, sweat plasters Jim’s hair to his forehead, and his eyes are more manic than amused.

He goes for a brutal strike to Leonard’s solar plexus, but he telegraphs it for a split second and gives himself away. Leonard dodges and sweeps Jim’s feet out from under him, but Jim latches onto Leonard’s shoulder and flips him onto the mat.

They grapple for a few moments, but Leonard’s not about to let Jim kick his ass twice in a row. He distracts Jim with a jab to the pressure point under his left arm, and then in one fluid motion has Jim trapped underneath him with his hands pinned above his head.

Leonard’s about to crack a sarcastic quip, but then Jim’s looking up at him under his lashes, somehow both challenging and inviting. He’s pressed so close to Jim that he can feel his heartbeat, can feel every exhale. A bead of sweat rolls down Jim’s collarbone, and Leonard’s overcome with the urge to bow his head and taste it.

Time stands still, and if a comm from Chapel hadn’t blared from the speaker in the wall, they might have stood in that moment forever.

They scramble apart, and the moment dissipates like a hypospray. As Leonard hurries towards the locker room to shower and change back into his uniform, he can’t help but think that he’s lost something.

**Three Days Before the Talent Show**

Fucking engineers.

Sixty percent of the crew signed up to perform in the talent show, and the other forty percent were mostly engineers and science officers. The science officers because they’d never had this much time to do independent research, and the engineers because they were far more interested in coming up with increasingly creative ways to nearly kill themselves and the entire goddamn crew.

“Lieutenant Iwamoto, did any of you stop to think before you rigged up this mess?” asks Leonard as he runs the tricorder over the young woman on the biobed.

She blinks at him, and said, “Yes sir. We thought about the appropriate vector vs anti grav formulas, and especially about the trajectory of the launch as it varied per person.”

Leonard bites back some expletives he hasn’t needed to pull out since Jim nearly convinced Sulu to do a barrel roll with the Enterprise in the name of “aeronautic experimentation”.

“So let me get this straight.” He crosses his arms. “Y’all get it into your heads that it’s not enough to play chicken with the warp core, set up an obstacle course in the Jefferies tubes, and run a robot demolition derby in the cargo bay?”

“Sir, that was last week,” Iwamoto says earnestly. “We needed new things to do this week, Chief Engineer Scott was going crazy.”

Inhaling sharply, Leonard asks with pressure building in each word, “Are you telling me that Scotty both knew, and approved of this goddamn fool idea?”

Lieutenant Iwamoto nods, looking vaguely ill. 

“Scotty! Get your ass over here or I’ll tell Jim where you stashed your real still, not the piddly excuse you showed him when Spock ratted you out!” yells Leonard, knowing full well the engineer just had osteoregeneration on his right leg and that moving is not exactly in his best interest.

The Scotsman hobbles over on a pair of crutches, and Leonard sits him on the nearest biobed, checks that his leg’s okay, and then whacks him upside the head.

“Oi! What was that for?” Scotty rubs the back of his head and glares at Leonard, who just waves an arm at the Medbay full of mildly injured engineers. Scotty has the decency to look a little ashamed, but he clearly isn’t going to give up without a fight.

“It was just a wee bit o’ fun, that’s all. The lads just got carried away with the propulsion.”

“You morons went drag racing in a goddamn spaceship, with no protective gear or any sense of self preservation! What if the anti-grav buffers failed and hurled someone into the deck at a million miles an hour?” says Leonard, vibrating with anger. “Oh, wait, that actually happened.”

Scotty mutters under his breath, “Was only eighty five kilometers an hour.”

Leonard marches up to Scotty, puts two tricorders on either side of the engineer’s head and says imperiously, “Scotty, what are you?”

He gets a sigh, and a mournful, “An idiot sandwich.”

Lieutenant Iwamoto smothers a laugh, and Leonard whips around to point a finger at her. “I dunno what you’re laughing at, because if your commanding officer is an idiot sandwich, y’all are whole goddamn idiot buffet.”

She stops laughing immediately.

From behind them, a stiff voice inquires,“I don’t believe I’ve heard the expression ‘idiot buffet’ before, Dr. McCoy. Would you care to clarify its meaning?”

The last thing Leonard wants after a day of fixing up dumbass engineers is to give Spock an impromptu Terran culture lesson. However, he also knows that Spock hates coming to Medbay almost as much as Jim, so if the hobgoblin’s here, it must be for a good reason.

“What do you need, Spock?” asks Leonard as he prepares the osteoregenerator for Lieutenant Iwamoto.

The Vulcan clasps his hands behind his back and draws himself up to his full height. If Leonard didn’t know better, he’d say Spock was steeling himself for something.

“It is a private matter.”

Which is about as helpful as a trapdoor on a canoe.

Feeling a migraine coming on, Leonard gets one of the nurses to take over on Lieutenant Iwamoto, and herds Spock into his office. He takes a seat at his desk, holds up a hand to Spock in the universal signal for ‘wait a minute’ and pulls out a small flask. Just in case.

He unscrews the cap and says with trepidation, “Are we talking a pon farr situation here, because we can’t get to New Vulcan from this sector unless we haul ass at warp nine and-”

Now it’s Spock’s turn to hold up a hand, looking vaguely repulsed at the mention of the Vulcan mating cycle.

“No, Dr. McCoy. I am not here to discuss matters of Vulcan biology.” Leonard takes a swig of whiskey in relief. “I am here because the Captain is behaving strangely, and I believe you are to blame.”

Leonard chokes on his whiskey. “And how, exactly, did you come to that conclusion?” he asks, his words scathing but his mind racing with worry about Jim.

“You have not dined together in 5.67 days, you have not been on the bridge in 4.82 days, and the Captain has increased our sparring matches and chess sessions by a percentage of 3.93 in the last week,” recites Spock, dark eyes boring holes into Leonard. “And the Captain is agitated, restless, and quick to reprimand situations where he previously was not.”

“Clearly, something has changed.”

Leaning back in his chair, Leonard sighs and says, “Spock, Jim’s just bored, like everyone else. And he’s irritated that he can’t perform in the talent show, because he thinks everyone would feel obligated to vote for him because he’s the captain, so he has to hear about it all the time and know that he’s stuck as a spectator.”

Spock inclines his head in acknowledgement of Leonard’s argument, but presses on anyway.

“The Captain has known of the talent show for four weeks now, and has not shown any of the behaviors I mentioned until one week ago.”

One week ago- Aw hell, that was when he started spending all his time in voice lessons with Uhura. Leonard’s about to reassure Spock that Jim’s fine, just not used to being unable to monopolize all of Leonard’s free time, when the thing he’s been trying very hard not to think about pops into his head.

The sparring match. He hasn’t seen Jim since the sparring match, and now it’s painfully obvious that Jim is avoiding him. Leonard has no idea what to do with that, so he shoes Spock out of his office with a paper thin, “I’ll talk to him, thank you for stopping by, please don’t make a habit of it.”

Then, he chugs the rest of the whisky in the flask and thunks his head down on his desk. He wallows in a pity party for a minute or so, but then an alarm reminds him that he has his last meeting with Uhura in ten minutes.

Ten minutes, just enough time to shove all of his complicated, wiggly feelings into a neat little box and then kick it down a well.

\---

“I’m so proud of you Leonard, it’s almost unbelievable how much progress you’ve made in the past few weeks,” says Uhura as she pulls him into a tight hug.

His final lesson/rehearsal with Uhura went well, because if med school and the Academy had taught Leonard anything, it was how to compartmentalize.

“Well, I had a truly unbelievable teacher,” replies Leonard as he returns her hug. They’d gotten close during the past few weeks, and he’d quickly discovered that in addition to being the best communications officer in the ‘Fleet, Nyota Uhura was kind, funny as hell, and one of the most perceptive people he’d ever met.

He’s about to leave her quarters when Uhura taps him on the shoulder and says, “Leonard, if you could stay a few minutes, I need to talk to you about something.”

She looks intense and serious, and Leonard’s not sure if he’s about to conduct an impromptu therapy session or get all of his life choices scrutinized under a microscope.

She points him to the purple loveseat and settles herself behind her desk, reminding Leonard for all the world like Dr. Wallace, his high school principal whose office Leonard had found himself in far too often.

“Jim’s being a bitch on the bridge, and you need to do something about it before we all mutiny,” she says flatly. “And don’t give me that crap about him being bored or sad that he can’t perform in the talent show, because we both know it’s more than that.”

She’s also brutally honest, which in the context of voice lessons, Leonard generally appreciates. Right now, he feels like an ant frying under a magnifying glass.

Leonard cross his arms and snaps, “I can’t help Jim if he doesn’t wanna be helped, especially if he won’t give me the time of day and hell if I know why.”

Except he does know why, and something must give him away, because Uhura’s expression softens. She types something into her PADD, and says “I just sent you a file. I want you to look at it, not right now, but on your own time .”

He starts to say something, anything, back, and Uhura just rolls her eyes at him and shoos him out the door. The door hasn’t quite shut, and Leonard hears an exasperated “_Men.” _from inside.

Leonard can’t help but agree. He cuts across the observation deck on his way back to Medbay, intent on burying himself in reports and second rate medical journals and the cheap Starbase thriller novel he keeps tucked in his desk and definitely not thinking about the file Uhura sent him.

In fact, Leonard’s so caught up in how he’s going to avoid thinking about Jim that he runs smack into his back, pain blossoming from his nose.

“Jesus, kid, you’re gonna be the death of me one day,” mutters Leonard thickly, blood running down the back of his throat and dripping from his nostrils.

He means it in a kind of joking, kind of deathly serious, kind of “ow my nose is fucking broken and I shouldn’t be responsible for anything that comes out of my mouth right now” way.

Jim, however, looks like someone just stabbed him in the chest and twisted the knife. He’s staring at the blood on Leonard’s face and hands like he’s never seen anything like it before.

At his sides, his hands twitch and Leonard knows without looking that Jim’s fingerspelling, tracing letters with his thumb in one palm and then the other. It’s a nervous tic he’s had as long as Leonard’s known him, but he’s bewildered as to why it’s showing up now.

He only ever does it when things are absolutely FUBAR, and even then only when he’s certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one, other than Leonard, is around to see it. But Jim’s hands were steady all through the Narada shitstorm, through the dozens of away missions gone wrong, through the aftermath of all three Kobayashi Maru simulations.

Leonard can’t for the life of him imagine why the sight of a an easily fixed, minor injury would upset Jim this much when the man has literally held his own intestines in place.

Jim walks Leonard to a med station further down the observation deck, still silent and still looking like he’s seen a ghost. Leonard uses the biosplint to reset his nose, and he’s wiping the blood off his mouth when Jim finally says hoarsely, “Yeah, I probably will.”

And he walks away with his hands shoved in his pockets, leaving Leonard with an aching nose and more questions than ever.

**The Night Before the Talent Show**

When he runs out of ways to distract himself, and Chapel kicks him out of Medbay at the end of his shift, Leonard decides to bite the bullet and look at whatever it is Uhura sent him.

Instead of avoiding Jim at the mess hall, because two can play that game, Leonard dusts off the private replicator in his quarters. He indulges a little with a plate of fried okra, catfish, and hushpuppies. He replicates a cold beer as well, because it’s that kind of night.

Armed with comfort food and alcohol, Leonard settles down at his desk and cautiously opens up the file on his PADD.

It’s an old fashioned photograph, of he and Jim at the Academy. They’re both decked out in those awful cadet reds, and from what he can see, they’re standing by one of the gardens near the math building. Leonard’s doubled over with laughter, and Jim’s punching the air and grinning like he just won the lottery.

Leonard doesn’t remember the photo being taken, or what the occasion was, but he does remember nearly crying with laughter, and then surprise, because at that point in time he didn’t think he’d ever be able to laugh like that again.

He takes a swallow of beer, and realizes that there’s a holo attached as well. He flicks it open, and nearly drops his beer entirely. It’s Leonard and Jim again, inside the Academy’s simulated shuttle bay.They’re on a bench tucked away in the corner, Leonard with his knees and head tucked into his chest, and Jim right next to him, rubbing his back.

It was right after Purgatory- A shuttle simulation where every system except life support fails, no matter what you do to stop it. No communication, no power, not even the holoscreen to see the vast emptiness outside.The instructors administering the simulation wouldn’t answer any calls for help, and they refused to tell you how long the simulation lasted, because it changed for every pilot and copilot that took it.

The idea behind it was to prepare cadets for the possibility of being lost in space, and give them a chance to come to terms with it in a simulation before they, god forbid, had to deal with it up in the black.

They only ever ran it four times.

Leonard and Jim were one of the unlucky pairs. Looking back, Leonard thinks that he was probably better off than most of the other cadets. His lifelong aviophobia filled his mind with images of swift, fiery plummets through the atmosphere and slow, cold marches toward oblivion in the depths of space every time he set foot in a shuttle. Five of eight cadets had to undergo intense therapy for months afterwards, and one dropped out entirely.

The only thing that kept Leonard from losing it completely after the simulation was the weight of Jim’s hand on his back, smoothing loops and swirls that pulled him back to the present moment.

It was an intensely private moment, and a hot wash of anger swept over Leonard at the fact that someone else had not only witnessed it, but gotten a souvenir. 

There are dozens more holos and photos in the file, all of he and Jim from the Academy. Some of them are happy moments, some of them are memories Leonard would much rather forget, but in every single one he and Jim are looking at each other like they can’t imagine doing anything else.

It takes Leonard’s breath away, and the thing he’s tried so hard to push down and not even let himself think about crowds into his mind. He closes his eyes, so tired of fighting it, and lets go of the last tattered piece of resistance to a truth he’s known for a very long time.

He’s in love with Jim, has been since that first awful shuttle ride six years ago. The realization doesn’t hit him like a ton of bricks, but rather like a warm quilt pulled over his shoulders and wrapped tight around him.

Switching on the holofield, Leonard moves all the holos and photos from his PADD so that they’re floating all over his quarters. He sets down his PADD next to his untouched food, and walks from photo to holo as if in a dream. The display is a gallery, a monument to his devotion to Jim looking at him everywhere he turns. It dares him to look back.

He doesn’t sleep that night, instead Leonard finds himself lost in memories not captured on screen, but jumbled in his mind. Nights where he’d patched Jim up, fussing up a storm to hide that he was so afraid that his efforts today wouldn’t be enough for tomorrow. Hours spent figuring out how to navigate Jim’s minefield of traumas and secrets and stupid coping mechanisms.

But it’s not just Leonard giving himself to Jim and getting nothing back, although Lord knows he would’ve taken that too.

He remembers Jim spending what precious little free time he had with Leonard in flight sims to help him pass his basic flight exams, even though Jim had an ungodly courseload of his own. Jim secretly comming Leonard’s mother to get her recipe for biscuits and gravy, and surprising Leonard with a huge batch after he passed his xeno boards. On the anniversary of Leonard’s father’s death, Jim crawling into bed next to Leonard and letting him cry and drink and rage at the world without a platitude in sight.

Leonard passes out on the floor, with something that looks suspiciously like hope curling into his chest.

**Fifteen Minutes Before the Talent Show**

Leonard sits with his head in his hands, trying not to hyperventilate. The dressing room starts to look a little blurry, and he looks around for the most appropriate place to vomit.

A familiar voice calls, “Nerves getting to you?”

He looks up slowly, and the room eventually stops spinning long enough for him to see Uhura. She looks even more stunning than usual, done up in something sleek and sparkly. She sets down her lyre case, and sits down next to Leonard.

“You could say that,” he mutters, not entirely confident in his ability to speak coherently. “You look fantastic, Uhura. Spock’s a lucky man, well, lucky Vulcan.”

She laughs and pats her hair. “I know.”

Leonard squeezes his eyes shut and rubs his temples. “I don’t think I can do this, I’m sweating more’n a sinner in church.”

“You can,” she says with utmost confidence. “Leonard, the key to performing when you’re scared out of your mind, is to take away everyone else and do it for one person in the audience.”

One person. He’s broken the laws of physics for his one person, has held the beating heart of his one person, and would do it all over again for the chance to see him happy, even if Leonard has to break his own heart to do it.

A little serenade should be a walk in the park.

Uhura takes his hand gently and says, “I know who I’m singing to. Do you?”

He looks her straight in the eye. “I do.”

She gives him a quick hug, and then pulls him to his feet and drags Leonard over to one of the many mirrors set up. He adjusts his blue bow tie, and lets Uhura straighten his lapels and shoulders. The old fashioned coat and tails fit Leonard perfectly, and Uhura tells him as much.

“There,” she gives him a generous look up and down. “You look good, Leonard. And you’re going to sound twice as good.”

“Because you said so?” asks Leonard with a chuckle. He feels less like vomiting than he did ten minutes ago, he’s grateful that Uhura anticipated his near breakdown.

Uhura tilts her chin up. “Because I said so. And because I want some of that Eagle Rare Bourbon.”

After this, Leonard’s inclined to give her the whole damn bottle. Yeoman Rand comes in to guide him to the wings of the stage, where Sulu’s just finishing up a terrifying sword dance. He bows to thunderous applause, and runs offstage.

Rand touches her comm and says with a theatricality Leonard didn’t know she had, “Thank you Lieutenant Sulu. Please welcome our next performer, Dr. Leonard McCoy!”

Leonard hears a faintly Scottish, “You bastard!” and steps out of the wings onto the stage. There’s a baby grand piano, a real piano, set up with a spotlight shining on it, and Leonard’s grateful that the bright light blinds him to everything else.

He’s strangely content, like he’s left his nerves and his baggage and who knows what else in the wings, and all that’s with him now is the music. Sitting down at the piano and flicking his tails behind him, Leonard arranges the antique sheet music and lightly sets his fingers on the keys.

The warm quilt feeling settles over him as he thinks of Jim, not just the one captured in the holos and photos still floating around his quarters, but of Jim right now. Older, a little wiser, with a few more lines that weren’t there before the Enterprise left on her maiden voyage. But forever glowing with something so bright and unique, he could outshine a goddamn supernova.

Leonard starts to play, the notes full and rich like they’d never been before, when karma proves herself once again to be a supreme bitch, and a red alert blares through the intercom.

For fuck’s sake.

He runs back off stage and high tails it to Medbay. Everyone he passes is absolutely professional, shaking off the past few weeks of boredom and shenanigans as if they never happened.

In his office, Leonard quickly changes out of his tuxedo and into his uniform. Striding out, he’s pleased to see that the incessant training he put the medical staff through is paying off in faster response times and more confidence in hypospray prep. Leonard checks with Chapel that the few patients they had in Medbay when the red alert went off are all secure.

Red alerts are always difficult for Medbay to prepare for, because the Enterprise gets into so many uniquely dangerous situations that there’s no telling who might be rushed through the double doors and for what.

Leonard makes sure that everyone from lowly medical ensigns to Chapel and M’Benga knows what their responsibilities are, and runs through diagnostic and treatment plans for some of the more frequent emergencies they’ve dealt with. It’s not because he doesn’t trust his staff, but because keeping people calm and confident is crucial during a crisis.

And then they wait. This is always, always the worst part, because it goes on forever.

Until it doesn’t. And, god, Leonard takes back what he said about waiting being the worst part, because then he’s called to the bridge with a request to bring M’Benga and two biobeds.

When they arrive, Uhura fills him in. Worry spills over her ramrod professionalism, and Leonard wishes he could take away the angry, haunted look in her eyes.

“Dr. McCoy, there was an entity out there that claimed to be able to alter reality. It was shaped like, like a giant squid.” She shudders and goes on. “The Captain tried to reason with it, but then the squid switched Sulu and Chekov’s bodies, just because it could. When that wasn’t enough, it-”

Uhura straightens her spine even more and goes on with a visible effort, “The squid said we needed to see what we were dealing with, and then it reached into Spock’s mind.”

M’Benga cut it in. “How do you know?”

She glares at him. “Doctor, the Commander and I are bonded. I know what it did to his mind because I felt it. Or at least, I did before he shut me out so I wouldn’t have to.”

Somewhere in the back of Leonard’s mind, he’s aware that he’s just lost a ton of credits in the shipwide betting pool.

M’Benga just nods and hurries over to where Spock lays crumpled on the bridge floor.

Leonard needs Uhura to tell him why Jim is right next to Spock on the floor, needed her to tell him approximately five minutes ago.

“After it was done with Spock, the squid said it needed to take someone back to whatever alternate dimension it was from, as a test subject. The Captain volunteered before anyone could stop him,” Uhura continues quietly. “The squid tried, but something went wrong. It dropped Jim, and vanished.”

She moves closer. “Leonard, right before he passed out, Jim said, ‘Tell Bones I’m sorry, and that he was right.”

He doesn’t wait to hear the rest because he doesn’t think he can stand to hear it, and rushes over to Jim’s too silent, too still body. He runs a tricorder over Jim, muttering, “Come on, kid, don’t let a stupid space squid be the thing that gets you.”

The tricorder indicates no physical injuries, but Jim’s brain scans tell him something even worse.

Jim’s in a coma induced by telepathic trauma. Telepathic trauma caused by a reality altering cephalopod that better stay hidden before Leonard steals a shuttle and hunts it down, aviophobia be damned.

Leonard takes a page out of Spock’s book and hides every bit of the fear and worry and weariness at how familiar Jim’s brushes with death are becoming, behind the rock solid mask of duty.

He barks orders to have Medby prepare two semi private rooms, and every piece of neural equipment dedicated to those two rooms alone. He pauses for a moment, and then modifies his orders slightly. “Chapel, prep a third biobed with a neural scanner and stabilizer as well.”

Uhura crosses her arms. “I’m fine, I told you, Spock shielded me from the worst of the squid’s attack.”

“Most, not all. Uhura, I’m not taking any chances of you developing delayed symptoms, so you can either get yourself to Medbay on your own two feet or I’ll get another biobed sent up here,” says Leonard, cursing not for the first time the stubborn selflessness present in every single member of the bridge crew.

She glares at him, but stalks off towards Medbay after pausing to touch her fingertips to Spock’s in a Vulcan kiss.

\---

Leonard fights the urge to slump against the wall as he grabs his sixth or tenth cup of shitty replicated coffee. It’s been thirty six long hours since Spock and Jim were rushed into Medbay, and eight excruciating hours since either of them displayed any change whatsoever.

Spock slipped into his healing trance sixteen hours ago, and M’Benga had explained that that was good, a sign that his brain was healing the damage from the invasion.

He’d had felt a sense of deep relief and vindication, because he’d argued with Spock for a month in favor of replacing Leonard with M’Benga as Spock’s primary physician, seeing as the man was the first human to do his residency at the Vulcan Academy Hospital and was currently the foremost non-Vulcan expert on Vulcan telepathic health.

Now, he’d give anything to see the bastard snap out of it and present him with a perfectly logical counterargument to the whole thing.

No, that was a lie. He’d give anything to see Jim snap out of it. Not that he doesn’t care about Spock, in his own unique way, but Spock was Spock and Jim was, well...Jim.

Leonard’s so lost in thought that he almost doesn’t notice when his coffee thermos is snatched out of his hand. Almost. He whirls around, ready to unleash righteous fury on whoever dared get between Leonard H. McCoy and his coffee-

And doesn’t see anyone. He looks down slightly, and sees a tiny junior nurse glaring at him and holding his coffee thermos like she’d rather throw herself out the airlock than give it back to him.

He rolls his eyes and chuckles, sounding delirious even to his own ears. “Did Chapel put you up to this, Nurse-?”

“Yahiya, sir.” She tucks the thermos under her arm even tighter. “Nurse Chapel told me, and I quote, ‘For God’s sake, don’t let that man drink another sip of coffee or he’ll give himself a heart attack.”

“Well, you can tell Nurse Chapel that if she doesn’t let me have my coffee back in the next ninety seconds, I’ll make sure Nurse Dubois’ on duty with Chapel for the forseeable future,” says Leonard waspishly.

Nurse Yahiya’s eyes widen.

“You wouldn’t,” she hisses under her breath. Leonard raises an eyebrow and holds out a hand for the thermos.

She shakes her head and says. “Dr. McCoy, and this from all the junior nurses, we know you try your best, but all of us are way more scared of Chapel than we are of you. Sir.”

Well, damn. He’s struck momentarily speechless. Luckily, he’s saved by an alert on his PADD signaling a change in Jim’s vitals.

Forgetting the coffee, Leonard hurries to Jim’s designated semi-private room. It’s always the same one, something Jim’s likes to call a “Captain’s privilege” and Leonard knows is a way of managing his trauma surrounding medical settings.

The automatic doors slide open after reading his thumb, and after a moment, he beckons Nurse Yahiya in as well, a little reluctantly. As much as he wants to be the only medical professional watching over Jim, Leonard can’t deny one of his staff the opportunity to observe the neural scan and stimulation procedure.

He takes a look at the readings from the biobed, and sees that they’ve going back to standard coma numbers. Leonard shakes his head, worried that Jim’s heart rate spiked dangerously high for no reason that he could make out with the tricorder.

Leonard talks Nurse Yahiya through setting up the neural scanner and stimulator after he does another full body scan on Jim. When he’s assessed that she’s done an excellent job, he takes over the machinery and starts the delicate work of probing Jim’s brain and sending precisely calculated electric pulses into the brainstem.

Thirty minutes pass. Nothing changes. Leonard sighs and scrubs a hand over his face, letting his eyes shut behind his fingers for just a moment. The blurry haze of exhaustion creeps into his bones, and he’s _so tired. _He hasn’t slept since before the squid attack, and he knows it’s showing.

But he can’t leave Jim alone, both for Jim’s sake and his own. Leonard doesn’t want to sleep, because it would mean leaving one nightmare scenario for the million others stashed in his head, the kind that scurry out and take over his sleep until he wakes up more tired than when he went to bed.

And the last time Jim regained consciousness without Leonard in the room, it wasn’t pretty.

“Dr. McCoy?” asks Nurse Yahiya. She’s standing on the other side of the biobed by Jim’s head, looking like she can’t believe it’s really Captain James T. Kirk lying there. It’s hard enough for Leonard to see Jim like this, even though he’s seen the kid at his absolute worst and best and everything in between.

Jim fights so hard to make sure that the crew, other than a select few, never see him as anything but the confident, capable Captain they need him to be. Leonard hates it, but he gets why Jim does it. He’s the youngest starship captain ever, he’s just barely shook off the smothering comparisons to his martyr father, and his first taste of command was in dubious circumstances at best.

But Jim leads like there’s nothing else he could do, and he’s proven over and over to the crew and to Starfleet that he will always put the safety of the people on his ship before anything else.

When Leonard looks at the protectiveness on Nurse Yahiya’s face, he’s struck with the fact that as much as Jim cares for his crew, their dedication and loyalty to him is tenfold.

He’s shaken out of his thoughts by the sound of soft singing in a language he doesn’t understand. Nurse Yahiya has her eyes half closed, and with a wistful smile she ends the song. She turns to face Leonard, and blinks rapidly.

“I’m sorry, Dr. McCoy, I-”

Leonard waves off her apology. “Don’t apologize for bringin’ a little beauty into this place, Lord knows we could use more of it, especially in times like this.”

Nurse Yahiya looks down, adjusts her blue hijab and says without looking at Leonard, “My brother, Felix, was in a coma for eleven years. I joined Starfleet to search the stars for a cure, because nothing on Earth worked.”

“My grandmother sat at Felix’s side every day, singing to him while she knitted or sewed or did crossword puzzles on her PADD. Nothing ever changed, but nobody could drag her out of there if she wasn’t ready.”

She continues, “And then, when I was in the middle of a trauma surgery simulation, I got a comm saying he’s woken up. When I got to Senegal a few hours later, he’s awake and of course my whole family is there. It was a little strange, seeing the brother I knew as a child wake up as a man.”

“He pulled me aside somehow, and do you know what he said, Doctor McCoy?” asks Nurse Yahiya.

Leonard shakes his head, engrossed in her story.

“Felix told me that he woke up because he couldn’t take one more minute of grandmother’s singing, because she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket!” Nurse Yahiya laughs, wiping tears from her eyes that Leonard politely ignores.

He can’t help but cackle with her, and Leonard’s grateful that he brought her into Jim’s room with him. She pats him on the arm and whispers knowingly, “But a little bird told me that you _can _carry a tune.”

Setting his thermos on the stiff backed chair next to the bio bed, Nurse Yahiya doesn’t give him the chance to ask if this little bird speaks fifteen languages and has a penchant for Vulcans before she leaves the ward.

Leonard half collapses into the uncomfortable chair and chugs the still-warm coffee. He stares at Jim until his eyes burn, then he drops his head.

What the hell, he thinks, and starts singing something he hasn’t sung since Joanna was still curled in Jocelyn’s belly, before they’d known that her first labored breaths would also be her last.

It’s a lullaby his mother sang to him when he’d knock on her bedroom door in the middle of the night, dragging his blankets behind him and wrecked with the nightmares of an anxious child. She’d carry him back to bed, climb in with him, and sing to him until he sank into sleep.

“When honeysuckle’s twinin’ ‘round the door; and music’s chimin’ somewhere soft and low…”

His voice is rough and scratchy, but he remembers the words and the melody and right now, that’s all Leonard needs to keep going. When he’s close to the end of the song, Leonard lets go of the last, singular, fuck he gives about propriety and squeezes Jim’s hand.

It’s calloused and scarred and limp at the moment, but Leonard holds on for the memory of Jim’s expressiveness through his hands, from his dramatic hand gestures to his frantic finger spelling.

Jim doesn’t squeeze back, but Leonard doesn’t let go. He thinks of the holo gallery that surely can’t still be projected in his quarters, and knows that he would keep singing until his lungs give out to see a fraction of a smile on Jim’s face.

So he does.

He goes from lullabies to hymns to classical music. Time goes by in a blur, all Leonard knows are the notes spilling out of him and the steady beeping of the biobed.

It’s getting harder to get the words out, he’s pretty sure he can taste blood in the back of his throat. Leonard’s got one more thing to tell Jim, and if he has to do it in week old scrubs with the voice of a chain smoker instead of in a coat and tails, then so be it.

“Fly me to the moon; let me play among the stars; let me see what spring is like; on Jupiter and Mars,” rasps Leonard, worry and fear and love changing the swing tune into something desperate and longing.

He finishes the song, and rests his head on Jim’s shoulder. He’ll probably have to run a regenerator on his throat soon, but not yet. Leonard reaches up to card a hand through Jim’s hair, selfishly taking advantage of what might be his only opportunity to do so.

“Damn, Bones, why didn’t you just say so?”

Leonard lifts his head up, slowly, because if this is a hallucination he doesn’t want to know, but it isn’t. It’s Jim, awake and alert and looking at Leonard with those stupid baby blues.

He tries to tug his hand out of Jim’s, suddenly terrified that he’s made a huge mistake and planning eighty different ways to stay friends with Jim and drown these feelings with anything on hand.

But Jim holds on, and nudges Leonard’s arm until he drops his other hand onto Jim’s as well. Hope balloons in his chest, and Leonard’s willing to let it stay, just for a bit.

“I heard every word,” Jim says, his voice full of wonder and awe, like he can’t believe someone would do that for him. “Bones, please, I have to know- did you mean it?”

“Every word,” Leonard says, his voice finally giving out.

Jim’s looking at Leonard the way he did in the holos, the way he always does, and the weight of his gaze is almost too much.

“After all this time?”

Leonard takes Jim’s right hand and turns it palm up.

“Always,” he traces, over and over and over again.

THE END

**Epilogue**

Uhura stumbles into her quarters, kicking off her shoes as she stifles a yawn in the crook of her arm. Alpha shift had been particularly draining, and her left ear aches from the regulator in her earpiece digging into it all shift.

Flopping on her bed, she rummages underneath for a bottle of whatever contraband alcohol she can reach. Uhura yanks one out, and grins when she recognizes the unique bottle of Eagle Rare bourbon.

She’d mostly been kidding when she told Leonard that she wanted the whole bottle in exchange for seeing Jim knocked off his game, but a few days after the squid attack he’d come by and presented it to her with a blush and a muttered, “Thank you. For everything.”

After she pours herself a generous glass and snuggles into her purple armchair, Uhura pulls up the latest episode of the trashy holovid that she loves to make fun of, and Spock pretends that he doesn’t love it just as much.

The theme song barely finishes, when a comm notification pops up in the corner of her PADD. Intrigued, she pauses the holovid and flicks open the comm.

It reads:

_Nyota, _

_I miss you!!! Is the Enterprise still as crazy as the last time we talked? Life on the Sacajawea’s pretty boring, but Winona Kirk’s coming to upgrade our nacelle coils, and Chief Engineer Tao says that I’m the only junior engineer she’ll work with. Speaking of Kirks, did Jim get that file I sent him with all those holos and photos from the Academy?_

_He commed me and said that a sentient virus destroyed all of his personal files, and he knew that I’d hacked his PADD sometime in our second year. When I asked him why he didn’t lock me out, all Jim said was that he figured it was my way of looking out for him. _

_Shit, gotta go!_

_Love, _

_Gaila_

_P.S Tell Spock I still think his ears are cute!_

Uhura chuckles as she reads Gaila’s message, delighted to hear from her Orion friend. Gaila’s posting on the U.S.S Sacajawea meant that the two of them had only met in person a few times since graduating, and Uhura missed her dearly.

Just as she’s about to press play on her holovid, another comm notification pops up. Uhura takes a gulp of bourbon and opens it, resigning herself to never finding out if the Mrennian pirate falls for the Betazoid courtesan or not.

This one reads:

_Uhura, _

_Thanks for showing Bones what I couldn’t tell him, I knew I could count on you. _

_-Jim Kirk_

_P.S Tell Gaila to tell my mom that I said hi, and also to stop congratulating me on “Finally boning Bones” and to really, really stop messaging Bones with anecdotes of when we slept together at the Academy_

_P.P.S He doesn’t need any help ;)_

Uhura takes a swig of bourbon right from the bottle and blocks all non-essential comm notifications for the rest of the night.

As she finally presses play on the holovid, she draws her fluffy blanket around her and mutters a vehement, “_Men”._

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first fic, ever. After going on eight years of voraciously consuming fic, I figured it was time I tried to contribute a little something of my own. Star Trek and music both mean a lot to me, and I've had this plot bunny floating around for ages. The songs Bones sings at the end are "A Southern Lullaby" and Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon." 
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the Star Trek franchise in any way, do not in any way make money from this work, I am merely a fan playing in the sandbox of canon.


End file.
